New Statesman writers appear at Stoke Newington Literary Festival

The North London neighbourhood of Stoke Newington boasts a rich literary history: Daniel Defoe once lived at 95 Church Street; Edgar Allen Poe went to school just down the road. The annual Stoke Newington Literary Festival, now in its fourth year, pays homage to the area’s tradition of radical thinking and literary values with a five-day programme of events, tours and talks.

The New Statesman is pleased to partner with the festival, in which several of our editors and writers will be participating. Highlights include:

Reads Like a Seven

New Statesman deputy editor Helen Lewis joins Steven Poole, award-winning broadcaster/game developer Ste Curran and others in a revival of ‘Reads Like a Seven', where they read out one of their pieces of games journalism. It's curated and presented by New Yorker games contributor Simon Parkin (read Simon's pieces for the NShere). Following a sell-out debut at last year’s GameCity 7 - where blogger Kieron Gillen described it as “a reminder of the breadth of what gaming is, what it means and, indirectly, how writers on games have wrestled down the immaterial” – this second iteration promises to “dispels any doubts that video games deserve to be considered alongside other art forms, either for their breadth of invention or the passions they provoke”.

Multiculturalism and the Rise of the Far Right

David Goodhart, director of think tank Demos, will be in conversation with New Statesman assistant editor Daniel Trilling. Goodhart has recently authored a controversial book, The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-war Immigration, advocating for reduced immigration to the UK and posing the argument that immigration can undermine national solidarity. Trilling’s book, Bloody Nasty People: the Rise of Britain’s Far Right, charts how the likes of the BNP and the EDL have exploited anti-immigration sentiment to pin the nation's ills on to the shoulders of the vulnerable.

Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere

BBC Newsnight’s economic editor Paul Mason contextualises worldwide dissent — the Arab Spring, Athens, and Quebec, as well as social unrest in the UK — in his updated best-seller Why It’s (Still) Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions. He’s joined by New Statesman contributing editor Laurie Penny in offering insights and anecdotes on dissent and its role in the global future. How will social networking, the economic crisis and a new political consciousness ignite the next generation of radicals?

Tariq Ali in Conversation with Owen Jones

Tariq Ali, filmmaker and author of over a dozen books on world history and politics including The Clash of Fundamentalisms and The Obama Syndrome, engages leading new Left voice and New Statesman contributor Owen Jones in a wide-ranging geopolitical discussion - in light of the reissue of Ali’s The Stalinist Legacy. Jones is the author of Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class.

Leader: The unresolved Eurozone crisis

The eurozone crisis was never resolved. It was merely conveniently forgotten. The vote for Brexit, the terrible war in Syria and Donald Trump’s election as US president all distracted from the single currency’s woes. Yet its contradictions endure, a permanent threat to continental European stability and the future cohesion of the European Union.

The resignation of the Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi, following defeat in a constitutional referendum on 4 December, was the moment at which some believed that Europe would be overwhelmed. Among the champions of the No campaign were the anti-euro Five Star Movement (which has led in some recent opinion polls) and the separatist Lega Nord. Opponents of the EU, such as Nigel Farage, hailed the result as a rejection of the single currency.

An Italian exit, if not unthinkable, is far from inevitable, however. The No campaign comprised not only Eurosceptics but pro-Europeans such as the former prime minister Mario Monti and members of Mr Renzi’s liberal-centrist Democratic Party. Few voters treated the referendum as a judgement on the monetary union.

To achieve withdrawal from the euro, the populist Five Star Movement would need first to form a government (no easy task under Italy’s complex multiparty system), then amend the constitution to allow a public vote on Italy’s membership of the currency. Opinion polls continue to show a majority opposed to the return of the lira.

But Europe faces far more immediate dangers. Italy’s fragile banking system has been imperilled by the referendum result and the accompanying fall in investor confidence. In the absence of state aid, the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world’s oldest bank, could soon face ruin. Italy’s national debt stands at 132 per cent of GDP, severely limiting its firepower, and its financial sector has amassed $360bn of bad loans. The risk is of a new financial crisis that spreads across the eurozone.

EU leaders’ record to date does not encourage optimism. Seven years after the Greek crisis began, the German government is continuing to advocate the failed path of austerity. On 4 December, Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, declared that Greece must choose between unpopular “structural reforms” (a euphemism for austerity) or withdrawal from the euro. He insisted that debt relief “would not help” the immiserated country.

Yet the argument that austerity is unsustainable is now heard far beyond the Syriza government. The International Monetary Fund is among those that have demanded “unconditional” debt relief. Under the current bailout terms, Greece’s interest payments on its debt (roughly €330bn) will continually rise, consuming 60 per cent of its budget by 2060. The IMF has rightly proposed an extended repayment period and a fixed interest rate of 1.5 per cent. Faced with German intransigence, it is refusing to provide further funding.

Ever since the European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, declared in 2012 that he was prepared to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the single currency, EU member states have relied on monetary policy to contain the crisis. This complacent approach could unravel. From the euro’s inception, economists have warned of the dangers of a monetary union that is unmatched by fiscal and political union. The UK, partly for these reasons, wisely rejected membership, but other states have been condemned to stagnation. As Felix Martin writes on page 15, “Italy today is worse off than it was not just in 2007, but in 1997. National output per head has stagnated for 20 years – an astonishing . . . statistic.”

Germany’s refusal to support demand (having benefited from a fixed exchange rate) undermined the principles of European solidarity and shared prosperity. German unemployment has fallen to 4.1 per cent, the lowest level since 1981, but joblessness is at 23.4 per cent in Greece, 19 per cent in Spain and 11.6 per cent in Italy. The youngest have suffered most. Youth unemployment is 46.5 per cent in Greece, 42.6 per cent in Spain and 36.4 per cent in Italy. No social model should tolerate such waste.

“If the euro fails, then Europe fails,” the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has often asserted. Yet it does not follow that Europe will succeed if the euro survives. The continent that once aspired to be a rival superpower to the US is now a byword for decline, and ethnic nationalism and right-wing populism are thriving. In these circumstances, the surprise has been not voters’ intemperance, but their patience.